One cute and incredibly brave dog from the town of Kumage, in Japan’s Kagoshima Prefecture, chased off a Google Street View car many, many times its size, a car that for all we know may have been trying to steal the boat the dog was protecting, possibly for the as yet unannounced Google Sea View, or was potentially filming for the hated Cat Street View.

Like all of these amazing finds, equally surprising is that someone was looking up a quiet dead end near the beach on the island of Tanegashima, when they must have chanced across the scene. Though even from the first image in which the dog appears, it has evidently perked up at the sight of the car so you know something cute is about to happen.

▼ Google decided not to blur out the poor speeding dog’s features, leaving it open to identification.

With expressions varying from what may be anger to lust to playfulness, but mostly that berserk crazed look that small dogs always have, the dog seems to literally fly as it chases down the car taking its photo. The plucky canine didn’t give up easily either, as following the path the car took on Google Street View reveals quite how far it was pursued.

Japanese social media users had plenty to say about the pup, although mostly about sweet, ,curious, or frisky it looked.

“I laughed so hard when I saw how far it chased the car!”
“It’s so cute!”
“It looks like it’s saying, ‘What’s this that’s come down my road?'”
“As soon as it sees the odd-looking car, it knows something’s up.”

What’s either particularly gratifying or sinister is that the road the Google Street View car was following stops in a dead end a short distance later, so the brave pooch undoubtedly caught up with the vehicle. It would be nice to think that à la comedy films where someone chases a large mugger, the dog realised it had bitten off rather more than it could chew, and pretended to have just been out jogging. We’ll never know, but at least its bravery and cuteness has been captured, frozen in perpetuity, for our viewing pleasure and perhaps inspiration.